Patience

My greatest weakness is that I am impatient. This impatience applies to so many areas of my life from cooking to relationships to just dealing with the everyday parts of life. When I have no control at all: being stuck in traffic on the freeway, waiting in a doctor's office, waiting in a long line, or sitting on a delayed plane flight, I force myself into an almost meditative positive state to get through it. Ironically, in some of the most awful times, when there is nothing I can do, I am quite patient and make the best of it. I make lemonade out of lemons. I often keep a notebook in my purse or have a book nearby and I'll take that waiting as an opportunity to read or write. When we ran out of gas one time I took some of my favorite pictures waiting for the auto club to come and help us. Same with the dead battery. My daughter and I had a nice time waiting together. Sometimes I am just still and try to notice what is around me.

However if there is the slight modicum that I might have control over "the waiting," that I personally can do something "to hurry things along" then having patience is my greatest challenge. In cooking I can't tell you how many times I didn't let the onions caramelize enough before I added the tomatoes. I was impatient to get the recipe finished and put in all the ingredients. But if I could have just waited a few more minutes than the onions would have been sweet and perfect. The acid in the tomatoes stops the onions from caramelizing so no matter how long you cook your sauce or soup you after you prematurely add the tomatoes you can't go back and fix the onions. My impatience as a cook prevented the onions from developing that sweet and delicious depth of taste. Instead they are bitter and I kick myself every time I eat the Vodka Sauce that I literally didn't take five extra minutes to wait. The same with veal stock that needs to be reduced. TIME IS THE KEY FACTOR. Let it alone and let it slowly do what it is supposed to do. The difference is either watery tasteless broth or a deep rich incredible sauce. And patience is what it takes.

I'm a doer. I like to get things done. I like to make decisions and go forward with a plan. I don't like to sit around and wait to decide what to do. I'm also used to being in charge. I was used to running large events and giving directions and getting a lot done. I accomplished so much at such a frenetic pace that it made some people's heads spin. I however felt like I wasn't accomplishing enough. I'd have 20 things on my list of things to do and would find I was lucky if I could truly accomplish three to five of those each day. There was always something "more" I could do and I impatiently wanted to do it all. And the result is that you have a feeling of "never enough." That there is never "enough time" and that you just make endless lists of "more to do."

Perhaps the greatest lesson I received of all is working with my special needs daughter homeschooling. When I'm working with her I must wait. I can't make grocery lists or clean the house to work on another project when I'm next to her. I have to just sit there and BE with her. 95% of the time she gets the right answers but I must give her the time to figure out those answers on her own. I want to give her the answers or show her a quicker way. But I have to let her do it alone. Her art is the same. She draws very slowly and meticulously but the most beautiful drawings emerge if you give her the time and space to do her art. Suddenly while I'm waiting "time" seems longer. The clock isn't spinning as quickly. Everything had to slow down so much that I was even aware of my breathing. I had to learn to be "in the moment" with her.

I know many of you who have read my recipe testing emails have noticed my typos or mistakes that were all a result of speed. I want to write as quickly as I can and hit send. Proof-reading requires patience and time and I just want to write and share. We live in such a time of instant gratification. We have fast food, we have text messages and emails. Everything is so immediate that we are so used to getting things in an instant and when we don't it is so easy to get frustrated. Interruptions and delays are all things that seem intolerable.

But I have learned how priceless patience can be. A dear friend wisely wrote to me "when you don't know what to do next: do nothing. When you don't know: be still in the moment. The 'thing to do' will present itself." Another friend told me her favorite quote is "Be still and know that I am God." That you can only hear and feel God when you are still and patient enough to listen, not rushing around in oblivion. Think of seeing and feeling the depth and beauty of nature. If we are always rushing to our next appointment or worrying about making the next phone call than we may not notice the tree in bloom next to the freeway or have the moment to take a walk and see what is all around us. Even my recent internet connection challenges, which were so frustrating at first, have been their own gift of learning the beauty and gift of patience and waiting. Think of a child's joy when the power goes so they can light candles and pretend they are camping vs the adult's frustration with the challenges of it.

Recently I've been given two incredible examples about Patience. One is from Zorba the Greek and the other is from David Anderson's book Breakfast Epiphanies entitled Hands Off: We Hatch Alone.

"I remembered one morning when I discovered a cocoon in a bark of a tree, just as a butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. I waited awhile, but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes, faster than life.

The case opened, the butterfly started slowly crawling out and I shall never forget my horror when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled; the wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them. Bending over it I tried to help it with my breath. In vain.

It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of its wings should be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear, all crumpled, before its time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my hand.

The little body is, I do believe, the greatest weight I have on my conscience, for I realized today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the eternal rhythm." --Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

The second from David Anderson, called Hands Off: We Hatch Alone also requires the miracle of patience. It is the greatest gift you can give those you love whether they be child, spouse or friend.

"Last week a box of chicks were hatching in the kindergarten classroom of our day school. There was a long line of children outside the class waiting to get a peek at the eggs. So I got in line. It had been a while for me, too.

As they moved through the line, all the children had their hands clasped behind their backs. I inquired why. Teacher's orders: This is how we approach mysteries that we cannot touch. Good idea. I put my hands behind my back, too. The eggs were small and quiet in the light. One was slightly cracked, another chipped, a small shell fragment lying below. But most were perfect and still.

We watched those eggs for the next week. When one hatched, the chick was moved into a box with the other free birds. But I kept noticing the quiet eggs, the few that couldn't seem to break free. In the kitchen with a cup of coffee I asked Annette, one of the teachers, what was wrong.

'Actually,' she said, 'we're doing pretty good. Odds are, 25 percent just don't hatch. And of course,' she said, 'you can't help them do it." Remember that childhood lesson?

It's worth remembering. We talk much about our interdependence, about helping one another, and it's true--to a point. But we cannot help a single other person hatch. If the task of life is to break continually out of the shells that confine us and into freedom, that is a solitary task. Helping doesn't help.

Every child must resist officious adults. 'I want to do it myself!' The tendency of love is to do too much. We can't keep our hands off other people's struggling lives. We forget that the struggle is natural and necessary. It's painful and perilous to get into this world, and it's usually more of the same when we leave. No strife, no life. But every generation wants to spare its children the bitter struggles of its own enduring. What we now call 'the greatest generatioin' often wonders how their children and grandchildren would have been be able to endure war, Depression, rationing, universal sacrifice and hardship. The answer is simply that the 'greatest' generation determined to eliminate for its children the very difficulties that made them great. They ran resistance for their kids, they gave them money for nothing and perks for free. They got them better jobs to start and acceded to the notion that they ought to have at the beginning of their lives everything their parents had at the end. And they did it absolutely in love.

Reinhold Niebuhr said, 'I am never so dangerous as when I act in love.' Not only romantic love is blind. Every so-called love that seeks to do for others what needs--crucially--to be done by oneself is blind to its own ego needs. When I seek to help others, what need is that meeting in me? Do I need to appear stronger? If my child fails, am I afraid of how that reflects on me, on my family? If we're not asking these questions, we're dangerous in love.

In twelve-step terminology, that kind of 'love' is called enabling. It's helping someone to death. Some of us have friends or family in that extreme plight. And all of us deal daily with ordinary people who need to hatch. Our job is to coach some and cheer for progress but mostly to leave them alone. Beautiful, life-giving neglect.

It was fun watching the chicks peck, wriggle, and kick their way into this life. But then I'm not a chicken. It's much harder when one of your own is on the dark side of that shell. Then it can hurt. Then it's life and death. Then we want to reach out and help...just a little. Our hearts actually get in the way; we forget that no one can break anyone else through.

Parents cannot do it for adolescents and adult children; husbands and wives cannot do it for one another; neither can friends. We cannot stop drinking for someone else; we cannot find someone a vocation; we cannot stop (or start) eating for another; we cannot life the pall of depression or assuage the unspeakable pain of a single other person. If they are going to break into freedom, they will have to hatch themselves. We can keep the egg warm, and we must pray--but with hands folded behind our backs. For this is the only way we may approach mysteries that we cannot touch."

Patience has so many aspects to it: Patience helps us to be who we are as individuals. Patience allows others to be themselves. Patience allows "flavors to develop" in a recipe, flowers to bloom, trees to grow tall, grape juice to change into wine, children to learn to walk, and gifts to be born. Patience, while it involves waiting, miraculously allows us to be here now. It allows us to see and enjoy the gift of this moment and to appreciate the process as much as the final result.

Mother's Day

I have the privilege of having many people share their most personal and vulnerable stories with me. I suppose it is because I'm a very open and vulnerable person myself and am filled with compassion. Recently I've had quite a few incredible people come up to me and tell me about the pain of their childhood and how certain words or actions by their mother's hurt them. Interestingly enough all of these are successful people with great friends who made adjustments and became loving compassionate giving people despite the shortcomings of their parents.

After listening to these stories Janice Tieken posted on Facebook "Sometimes I imagine that people come from a perfect loving families and that I am in the minority to not have to be so. Logically I know this is false. Of course some do, but not all by far." Then she wrote "finding a way to love our flawed parents benefits us the most." Her post had 28 comments! 28! All on the pain experienced by flawed parents and how each person dealt with and overcame that pain. Each person had a way of dealing with their own pain. But most wrote forgiveness was ultimately the way they moved forward.

Here are two examples that were beautiful and heartfelt:

"I've experienced the full cycle of difficult parents and childhood to the redemption of then facing issues and becoming beautiful, heartfelt souls. Now when I look back I can concentrate on the beauty, before the resolve, I only saw the pain. We are all just childlike souls here who make mistakes and react in fear until we learn grace (my experience). & looking at & learning from the pain & patterns is freeing. I don't know that anyone had a painfree childhood but I think those who get to examine & learn & ultimately choose what they bring forward have a richness others don't know." -

D.k. Crawford

"No one is perfect; just as we are flawed, so are our parents, and others, flawed. True love, I think, involves accepting and loving people despite their flaws."

For me I always wanted to be a Mom. I wrote about it in my high school year book that it was one of my goals. From the time I was little I imagined being a mother. I liked to do so many homey things like sew, cook and knit. My sister and I were constant "nesters." We'd move into our cabin in Yosemite and immediately make our little shelf next to our bed "home." The same with a hotel or wherever we went. We did all sorts of things to make something homey and having children seemed the ideal extension of our natural "homemaking" abilities.

I was a camp counselor in high school and had "the best cabin," "the best dining hall table." The kids respected me and liked me and seemed proud to try to do a good job and follow my lead without me having to yell or be strict. I just explained the rules and the goals and they followed them. I thought I was so good with kids that I would be the perfect mother.

I wanted to have four kids in four years, just like the Bringard's. My mom had had four kids in 6 years, which was a lot of fun for us as kids but closer seemed even better.

Then I got pregnant. I was so sick for the entire 9 months. I never imagined I could be that sick for that long. I never imagined that when Melissa Madeline was born I would love her so much that my protective maternal instinct of worrying went into overdrive. "If there was a tidal wave where would I escape to. If she feel out of the stroller and into the drain how would I rescue her." Danger seemed everywhere. I was afraid to leave her alone if I took a shower.

I had this concept that I would anticipate her every need so that she would never have to cry. I would feed her and care for her so well that she would be supremely happy. Then at five months I got pregnant again. And sick for only the first 3 months this time, but was on bed rest for pre-term labor for the last three months. My mother and a slew of army wives helped me care for Melissa Madeline around the clock while I was on bed rest since Jason was at work. Jason took care of her when he got home.

Then Melissa started having the febrile seizures and we didn't know what was wrong. Were they just the high fevers, were they something else. The most bizarre thing happened to me. Whenever my children were sick I would get angry. It hurt me so much that they were in pain and suffering in anyway so my hurt turned to anger because I didn't want them to be sick.

Without writing all the details that many know about sleepless nights and throwing up in the middle of the night and the demanding, never-ending schedules of taking care of children I can sum it up by saying it was the most humbling exhausting experience of my life and I wasn't very good at it. The toddler years were the hardest when you had to watch them every second for fear they would fall and hurt themselves. After three, when they could play more easily, it got a little easier. But forget about "homemaking" and "nesting." Suddenly the house was in a constant mess from toys, laundry, crafts and projects. No more did I have a tidy house that we just cleaned on Saturday mornings. I felt like I had to put blinders on just to get through the day.

And I won't go into a long dialogue about the food but that had to be the worst blow to me. People pay me large sums of money to eat my food and here I had my kids complaining and crying about what I cooked. I cook to make people happy and give them a gift. And I got crying from the gift I was giving. I remember in a last ditch effort making Peanut Butter cookies for Melissa when she was two. I thought at least that had protein and maybe should would eat that. She didn't touch them. I cried. My children eat better now that they are older but being a chef and having picky eaters was also an extremely humbling experience.

About the time they were four and five I read an article from Oprah's "What I Know for Sure." In it was a quote from Toni Morrison that said: "When a child's parents enter a room, that child is unconsciously asking herself, Do my mom's and dad's eyes light up when they see me? Do they think I matter?" At the time I read the article my girls were still waking up very early in the morning and I can't say that my eyes were lighting up when they woke me up. I just wanted a little more sleep, a little more time to myself. But after I read that article I made a conscious effort to smile and be delighted whenever they walked in the room. And guess what happened: suddenly I was delighted. I started trying to count my Blessings of the time I got to spend with my children.

One famous actress said that her kids didn't care if she was famous or not or won an academy award or not. All her kids cared about was that they were what mattered in her life.

Of course there have been other challenges, the biggest perhaps was homeschooling my brilliant artistic special needs daughter who has Asperger's and Dyslexia. And at the same time doing the best for Katherine and her own unique needs. Life is a constant mixture of challenges and Blessings.

Now I'm a single mother. That has its own new set of challenges but I'm embracing them. And the girls and I are finding joy in being together. One night we were all folding laundry together on the bed, and Melissa Madeline turned on itunes and started dancing. Then Katherine started dancing. So I got up and started dancing. There we were all dancing, folding and putting away laundry. Melissa Madeline said "I love living in a house of girls." I read an article in Whole Living on the zen you can find in doing simple household chores and I realized my daughter found the joy and zen without even needing to read the article. The girls are quite proud of their new skills and I'm proud they are learning how to take care of themselves.

There isn't an instruction book on parenting. And we all know that "collective wisdom" on parenting changes so frequently. One Jungian analyst, Daryl Sharp wrote: "I used to have a fantasy that somewhere there was a Big Book of collective wisdom called What to do When. It contained the prescribed solution to all life's problems. Whenever you found yourself in conflict you could just look it up in the book and do what it said."

But that book doesn't exist. We all instead stumble along trying to do our best and figure out the curve balls the are thrown into our lives. But I have found one thing that does help. The answers lie somewhere in the combination of: forgiveness, patience, compassion, understanding and gratitude. Forgiving ourselves for our own mistakes is first. It is so easy to blame others and try to criticize others without looking in the mirror first. Secondly it comes in loving yourself so that you can freely love your children and others. Patience, compassion and understanding all speak for themselves if they are sought in their truest forms. Gratitude, like forgiveness, is worth an extra mention. I have found that Gratitude can turn your day around. Gratitude journals, daily gratitude lists, finding the SL's (Silver Linings) as my friend, Hollye would say. It is healing to look for all the things your parents did for you instead of put a magnifying glass on their shortcomings or your own shortcomings. Humor helps too. Sometimes the shortcomings become humorous and life becomes more bearable when you can laugh at yourself.

So on this Mother's Day I send rest for those who are weary. I send healing for those who have been wounded. I send gratitude for the many things my Mother did for me and continues to do for me. I send love to my daughter's who taught me to be someone far different that I imagined I would be. And I send peace and love to all.